Personality Development - Annotated Bibliography Example

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 2005 PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Crawford, T.N., Cohen, P., Johnson, J.G., Sneed, J.R. & Brook, J.S. "The course and psychosocial correlates of personality disorder symptoms in adolescence: Erickson's developmental theory revisited", The Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2004, 33(5); pp. 373-387.This article touches upon the subject of personality disorder symptoms in children, namely their relationship over time with the emergence of intimacy in early adulthood and well-being during adolescence.

Using Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development of personality, the authors establish a relationship between well-being of adolescents and identity consolidation of the latter. First of all they define certain personality disorder symptoms also known as maladaptive traits of personality: histrionic, narcissistic, and borderline symptoms. Latent growth curve model was used to assess and compare correlations between the maladaptive traits, intimacy and well being on the one hand, and patterns of their development, on the other hand, in two samples of adolescents (13 and 18 years old correspondingly).

Results of the study support the initial hypothesis put forward by the authors: higher level of well-being strongly correlate with decline in maladaptive personality traits, while much higher score in personality disorder symptoms correlates with low level of well-being. An inverse correlation was revealed between the maladaptive personality traits and intimacy. This correlation strengthens as the child growth up. Thus, well-being is empirically confirmed to strongly correlate with adolescents' intimacy, which is fully consistent with Erikson's theory of personality development.

Calkins, Susan D. and Nathan A. Fox "Self-regulatory processes in early personality development: A multilevel approach to the study of childhood social withdrawal and aggression" Development and Psychopathology, 14 (2002); pp. 477-498 The article runs about self-regulatory processes which play highly important role in early development of personality and behavioral adjustments. Abundance of literature on developmental psychopathology suggests that psychosocial development of personality proceeds on multiple closely interrelated levels.

Authors of this article believe that the best way to properly understand and unfold these levels one has to focus upon studying self-regulatory processes. In the past, researchers considered that infants demonstrated individual differences in behavioral reactivity and regulation that had implications for subsequent development, and associated these behavioral differences with physiological differences, such as cortisol response and electrical activity of human brain. They also tried to find a relationship between the behavioral and physiological differences and environmental factors.

The authors apply this perspective to study childhood social withdrawal and aggression. The major finding is strongly correlation between behavior problems in small children and failures of their self-regulation that, in authors' opinion, lead to such problems. Despite a number of challenges waiting for those whom approach the problem of personality development from this perspective, the authors reasonably believe that there is no other way: understanding of early child functioning depends only upon research focusing on the unfolding of various components of the self-regulatory system over the firs years of life.

Harris, Judith Rich "Socialization, personality development, and the child's environments: Comment on Vandell (2000)", Developmental Psychology, 2000, 36(6); pp.699- 710.Author of this article investigates into the problem of forces and factors shaping child's personality. Apparently, children's behavior is strongly affected by numerous social factors: the process of 'socialization'. However, a number of intervention studies demonstrate that each of these social factors is influential only within a certain domain of child's personality.

Consequently, Harris assumes that long-term effects of parenting on development of child's personality are not as substantial as it was considered in the past. Instead, a new perspective - group socialization theory - is proposed by the author as an effective alternative which can possibly help us properly understand findings that do not fit the so-called 'prevailing view'. The essence of this theory is attribution of 'outside-the-home' socialization to identification with a peer group and assimilation of group norms and values.

While some points of this highly original theory are still to be tested and confirmed/disprove, the main idea is supported by reliable evidence.